Why It Takes Two is better than Half-Life: Alyx

Why It Takes Two is better than Half-Life

In the past year I made a lot of people very angry when I found Half-Life: Alyx to be "only" good, not excellent, in the test.

Apart from the fact that I always do it even after years in my job Still fascinating and somewhat disturbing that a contrary opinion about a piece of entertainment software can trigger such emotions in some people, I found one point above all very interesting that some people criticized me: In the test, I noted that Alyx without the really very good implementation of the VR experience would be rather mediocre in terms of play.

Table of contents

1 VR versus co-op 2 Quality through restriction 3 Even alone fun for two 4 Resi-return 5 The other way round a shoe out of it? 6 Happy memories Ui, it got loud! VR games cannot be compared with normal games, that is something completely different, such titles stand for themselves, and so on and so forth.

Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATFORM] . To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. I haven't quite understood why until today, or rather: Nothing has changed about my convictions back then. Yes, I do think that you can compare games with each other, regardless of whether you have fat plastic glasses in front of your face or not. Game is game, and above all shooter remains shooter.

Gimmick versus substance: Why It Takes Two is better than Half-Life: Alyx is (6) Source: Lukas Schmid About the author

Lukas Schmid has been working at Computec Media in various positions since 2010 and thus at PC Games, first as an intern, then as a freelancer, then as a volunteer, editor and now as chief editor for pcgames.de, videogameszone.de, gamesaktuell.de and gamezone.de. He loves action, adventure, action adventures, shooters, jump & runs, horror and role-playing games, you can hunt him with strategy titles, most rogue likes and military simulations. Every Saturday at around 9 a.m. he tells you in his column what is annoying or happy about him. Hate comments and love letters are welcome in the comments under the column, to [email protected] or on Twitter to @Schmid_Luki.

VR versus Koop

Gimmick versus substance: Why It Takes Two Better than Half -Life: Alyx is (3) Source: Valve Apart from the fact that my test conclusion was "pretty awesome" anyway, I precisely named the problems I had and have with Half-Life: Alyx: The gaming experience is great simple, manual reloading is annoying at some point, the frequent "puzzles" are no fun and are surpassed by those from the much older Half-Life 2. And yes, if it weren't for the great VR experience, it wouldn't have been an 8/10 rating underneath it in the end.

Now I would like to write "... and that's why It Takes Two (buy now / 37.99 €) the better game ", but since I had a very similar spontaneous transition in my column just last week, I'll leave that.

Ha, now I've used it through the back door !

Quality through limitation

Gimmick versus substance: Why It Takes Two better than Half-Life: Alyx is (5) Source: PC Games What do I mean by that? Well, It Takes Two doesn't rely on VR, it operates in a completely different genre than Alyx and doesn't even use the same perspective. It is primarily a jumping game that always borrows different gameplay ideas, and above all: It relies exclusively on co-op. Soloists are unlucky, because the adventure cannot even be started on their own - unless you are really very, very skilled at handling two gamepads at once.

Half-Life's gimmick: Alyx is VR. The It Takes Twos gimmick is mandatory co-op. This is how you could summarize the commonality of the two titles. Both titles are deliberately subject to restrictions in order, however, to subsequently enrich the gameplay.

I have already written it: Take away from Alyx VR and what remains is a significantly less appealing experience - I even have it myself convinced, because there are now several mods that make this possible.

In the case of It Takes Two, it's (so far) only a thought construct, but when playing I consciously paid attention to whether the gameplay was supported by the co-op Constraint is constrained so that it would be significantly less fun in a soloist experience. And I mean: No, it wouldn't be.

Even fun for two alone

Sure, the togetherness between yourself and Player 2 would be gone. As a game itself, I find It Takes Two so adorable, so successful that I would really enjoy it on my own, I'm convinced of that. The story is charming, the level design is excellent and there is so much variety on offer that you could fill five games with it.

Without any question, adjustments would have to be made so that the thing could work on its own. With It Takes Two, however, I don't have the feeling that elements have been "dimmed down" in order to bring the developer's vision to life. It would then simply be a damn good, linear jump & run, which already in its current style reminds me of the really good Astro's Playroom and the - funnily VR-exclusive - Astro Bot: Rescue Mission.

Resi return

Gimmick versus substance: Why It Takes Two is better than Half-Life: Alyx is (2) Source: Capcom And this is where the wheat is separated from the chaff for me. A cool gimmick can make a game (sometimes significantly) better, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. A game is really outstanding and, for me personally, particularly impressive, but if it is brilliant, no matter what you do with it.

A good example is Resident Evil 4. Even in the original version, it is a masterpiece , on the Wii and later on other platforms it got even better with motion control, and now I'm really excited to see what can be achieved in terms of immersion and quality thanks to the upcoming VR implementation.

Or Superhot - a fantastic puzzle shooter that also flourished in VR.

Is it the other way around?

Gimmick versus substance: Why It Takes Two is better than Half-Life: Alyx (4) Source: Kristiansson / ESL Of course, you could say that any game that doesn't benefit from any gimmick is also limited . A 2D hop like Mario or a rogue-like like Hades, for example, most likely won't get any better with VR. But this reasoning doesn't work in my opinion. Not developing a game with potential niche ideas in mind is different from designing a project entirely around it and then having to cut back on the content. Not having all eventualities in mind is the standard, not the exception.

Happy memories

In this respect: I will definitely return to the VR version of City 17 at some point, because Alyx is a really nice adventure that is a lot of fun in VR. And there is nothing at all against such an approach, to limit oneself to the one idea that one would like to implement and to optimize towards this idea, that is completely legitimate. But you only get me personally up to a certain point.

So I'm looking forward to Half-Life 3 more than an Alyx sequel, because that's where I expect Valve to show why The studio is still considered the masters of creative game design.

I will, unlike Alyx, always see It Takes Two, Resi 4, Superhot and Co. as more than great ideas that only narrowly Corset of their original releases work fine. And that's why I will remember them for much longer and motivate me to experience them again and again, on whatever platform.

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